A joint initiative intended to solve New Zealand’s chronic shortage of rural health professionals is investigating the creation of a new school of rural health.

The proposal to create a new national School of Rural Health is being looked at by the medical schools at the University of Auckland and University of Otago, in association with the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP) and the New Zealand Rural General Practice Network (NZRGPN).

The University of Auckland’s medical programme leader, Professor Warwick Bagg says there are sufficient medical students being trained in New Zealand, but the shared challenge is to get more graduates aspiring to work in rural communities to meet rural health needs and address inequity.

“The School of Rural Health would enable a vibrant and sustainable rural component for all health professional students by building a dispersed inter-professional faculty with its own leadership, based at up to 20 sites located in rural communities across New Zealand,” he says.

“The strength of this proposal is that it is inter-disciplinary, multi-located, rurally-focussed and sustainable which, taken together, provide a pathway for rural academic development that will benefit the health outcomes of rural communities,” says Professor Crampton, Dean of the Otago Medical School.

“Vibrant rural communities provide a rich learning environment for educating our health professionals and working in those communities during training will attract new graduates and returning health professionals to the rural sector,” he says.

“The vision is for rural communities, including iwi, to be at the centre of rural health professional education and research.”

Professor Bagg says, “We intend to work closely with these communities as they play a leading role in creating their future health workforce. We intend to work with them to solve their health service issues through a School of Rural Health.

“Targeted initiatives by our two universities, such as the Rural Immersion Programme in Whakatane and the Pūkawakawa doctor training in Northland, show that focused investment can achieve positive results for rural and regional communities,” he says. “This initiative would extend the coverage and results significantly.”

The learning would be delivered at marginal extra cost given the existing administrative, academic and curriculum infrastructure of the two universities and RNZCGP with the support of NZRGPN.

Since 2015, the medical schools have worked closely to develop the concept with the RNZCGP and the NZRGPN and are committed to creating a sustainable rural health workforce in New Zealand.

“To have a sustainable rural workforce we need to increase the number of New Zealand medical graduates choosing general practice from 30 percent to 50 percent. It is very important to consider this proposal as we have the potential to drive necessary change,” says Dr Tim Malloy, President of RNZCGP.

“Like most developed countries, New Zealand faced chronic shortages of rural doctors and other rural medical health professionals for some time,” he says.

“There needs to be system changes, including training in new ways as proposed, to ensure rural communities have equitable access to health services.”

NZRGPN CEO Dalton Kelly says his organisation was interested in any change to how medical, nursing, and allied health students are trained rurally.

“There is overwhelming evidence that giving trainees exposure to good-quality rural medicine during their training means it is much more likely they will choose to work rurally once they graduate,” he says.

The concept being considered would:

Include up to 20 inter-professional rural sites networked into the SRH.